8.03.2012

Librarians today are known as crusaders
for intellectual freedom, dedicated to providing unhindered access to a wide
variety of content. Their dedication was shown most dramatically in 2003, after
the Patriot Act made it permissible for the FBI to request library records on
patrons’ reading habits, computer use, and more. Librarians began shredding
patron records so that, if faced with a request from the FBI, they would be
unable to comply.1 They understood that protecting intellectual
freedom isn’t just about putting books representing a wide spectrum of
perspectives on the shelves, but also protecting patrons’ privacy and allowing
controversial books to be just as accessible as any others.

However, in late 19th- and early
20th-century America, protecting readers from “bad books” was seen as an
important part of a public librarian’s job. Depending on the community and
librarian, a “bad book” could be anything from a literary classic with sexual
content, a novel by an author with a controversial moral or political
perspective, a book on sexual health, or an illustrated anatomy textbook.
“Exclusion” of unsuitable books, as it was called, was not a job that all
librarians relished, but it was a duty they took seriously. In a 1908 piece in The
Library Journal, librarians from around the country described their
procedures regarding the exclusion or restriction of controversial material. A
librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library explained, “here and there is found an
‘indignant citizen’ who questions the right of the library authorities to act
as censors, but the reading public and the taxpayers expect such a course, and
consider it the proper one to pursue when looked at from the standpoint of what
books are likely to be best appreciated by readers.”2

Most of the librarians who contributed to
the 1908 piece agreed that books that were clearly “immoral or indecent” would
simply not be bought by the library, and one noted that “every library exercises
a certain amount of censorship of a negative kind when it is forced by the
meagerness of its funds to purchase only a limited number of the new books
published.”3However, when such books
had literary merit or academic value, the solution was not so simple. Books by
foreign authors were frequent targets of exclusion, and some librarians
reported only purchasing them in their original languages to limit readership.
As they do today, children’s sections steered young readers to age-appropriate
materials, but this did not address the issue of adults accessing these
materials without guidance. Wisconsin librarian, Mary Frances Isom, explained that in her library:

all these [questionable
books] are kept under lock and key in the librarian’s office and marked with a
‘Minor label’ plate [a label stating that it was not suitable for young
readers]. The catalog cards show no location and the small collection is held
in mind without difficulty by the assistant. The young people seldom discover
the existence of this forbidden fruit…A few library-wise women with morbid
tastes yearn for a sight of ‘the shut up shelves,’ but in vain, for no one is
allowed to go to these shelves; books must be requested from the catalog. They
are read consequently only by those who know what they are asking for.4

Other librarians described similar systems. In some
libraries, a patron requesting books from hidden shelves would have to answer
questions to prove that his or her interest in the material was scholarly. At
the Pratt Institute Free Library in Brooklyn, New York, patrons who requested a
book bearing a warning label were asked by the librarian to read the label and
confirm that he or she understood and still wanted the book. These hurdles may
have deterred immature readers from books librarians thought would disturb or
negatively influence them, but they also deterred adult patrons with genuine
literary or scholarly interest. Many were likely unwilling to run the risk of
being judged as morally or politically deviant, or invite scrutiny of their
personal lives based on their reading interests.

The
librarians’ 1908 accounts show a profession held responsible for the intellectual
diets of their patrons, under great pressure to protect readers, especially the
more impressionable, from potentially disturbing or unsavory material. Today,
the public’s expectation of librarians is very different, and while children’s
and teen sections guide young people towards books that are appropriate and
engaging for their age levels, public libraries have dispensed with the complex
systems of restriction that once “protected readers” at the cost of
intellectual freedom.

--Jennifer Coggins '12

Sources:
1. Dean E. Murphy, “Librarians Use Shredder to Show
Opposition to New FBI Powers,” New York
Times, April 7, 2003. NYT